


a wide wide world under the violet sky

by statusquo_ergo



Series: a fire in the sage's mansion [4]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Mike goes to Harvard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 21:04:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14481144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: Tempting as it may be, there's no way Harvey can hire some random kid with no law degree to be his senior associate.But there might just be another way around that.





	a wide wide world under the violet sky

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: I wish you would write a fic where… Harvey didn’t offer a job but use his influence at Harvard to get Mike in there with the full scholarship that he was promised. He was already accepted and the Harvard Club thing with Jenny showed that Harvey could have that kind of influence... And he lend him the $25,000 for Mike’s Grammy that he’d have to pay back.... Harvey kept an eye on him of course and they end up in relationship someway
> 
> Also written as part of the “Back Where You Belong” Marvey event for the episode “Enough is Enough” (s04e11).
> 
> Thanks to [FrivolousSuits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrivolousSuits/pseuds/FrivolousSuits) for helping with the research and for being a wonderful sounding board!

Harvey smiles woodenly as the latest in a seemingly endless barrage of Harvard graduates smiles proudly and swaggers out of the room. Harvey tries to remember a single defining thing about the kid and finds that he can’t; the candidates have all blended into the same person by now, a single hazy grey silhouette moving in and out of his line of sight to spout the same generic bullshit again and again with only mild variations in emphasis and pitch.

In a sudden fit of pique, Harvey leans out the door of the interview room where Donna’s set herself up at the reception desk with the day’s appointment log and an imposing stack of résumés.

“Donna,” he says, “we’re going to need to streamline this. Give each guy a hard time before you send them back. Give me a wink if they say something clever. Cool?”

Donna offers a wry smile, and he wonders if she’s as terminally bored as he is. “Okay,” she agrees. “What are you looking for?”

Good fucking question.

Someone sharp, he wants to say. Someone wily, quick-witted, intuitive, scrappy, unafraid of hard work. Someone who knows his own worth.

Someone one in a million.

“Another me.”

She nods as he retreats from the doorway, just catching a glimpse of the next automaton marching up to the desk with a smarmy grin in place under his wide eyes and greasy hair.

“So, Chip,” he hears Donna enunciate crisply, “what makes you think that I’m going to let the whitest man that I have ever seen interview for our firm?”

Harvey chuckles to himself as he returns to his post, leaning against the table there and readying himself for another clammy handshake and pointlessly pro forma chatter. “Chip” eventually shuffles into the room, obviously rattled by whatever Donna said to him, and Harvey actually feels himself falling asleep on his feet as he begins to introduce himself. Fifteen minutes have never crawled so slowly, but finally Chip whatever-his-name-is slinks back out the way he came in and Harvey steels himself for round fifty of ten thousand as he waits for this accursed ritual to come to an end.

The first genuine surprise of the day comes when the next candidate doesn’t immediately storm the gates. For a moment, Harvey considers stepping out to see what’s going on, but he can’t say that he doesn’t appreciate the break; he might as well stay put and enjoy it.

Of course, he should have known it wasn’t going to last.

“Rick Sorkin,” he hears Donna call after a couple of minutes. “Rick Sorkin?”

Great, that’s just what Harvey needs. A goddamn slacker. Donna lowers her voice to a normal volume and keeps talking, so the kid must’ve shown up, finally, but Harvey can’t make out what either of them is saying; after a moment, Donna leans back in her chair, and Harvey expects he’s about to find out just how far back in her head she can roll her eyes.

Except that she doesn’t roll her eyes.

She _winks._

Startled, Harvey jerks back a little, resting his weight on his heels as he prepares himself for…well. Who knows what.

Something fun.

The scrawny kid who stumbles into the interview room is already about as opposite from the other applicants as can be, even before he opens his mouth: His suit is some ill-fitted off-the-rack number; his hair is a tousled mess as though he literally just rolled out of bed, as opposed to carefully arranged to merely give that impression; his briefcase looks like he bought it at the dollar store, the clasps already straining. Harvey ought to treat him to lunch just for breaking up the monotony of the day; he looks like he could use it.

“Hi,” he says, pressing his free hand to his slacks as though to dry a nervous sweat. “Uh, Rick Sorkin.”

“Harvey Specter,” Harvey says, reaching out for a shake. “Nice to meet you, why don’t you have a seat here?”

They’re about halfway to the table when it happens.

The straining clasps of the dirt-cheap briefcase bust open, nine little plastic bags of weed spill out across the floor, and this is, by far, the best day ever.

Harvey arches his eyebrows as Sorkin scrambles to gather up his stash. “Can I help you?” he asks sardonically, and the kid looks up at him, wide-eyed with fright as he crams the bags back into his broken case.

“No.”

Well, there’s no way Harvey is letting this one go without a fight, or at least an explanation. Walking around the table to claim his seat, he gestures to the chair opposite, a wordless invitation to this poor kid so obviously out of his depth.

“So, Rick,” he says. “Can I call you Rick?”

“You can,” the kid says as he takes Harvey’s offer to sit, “but my name’s Mike. Mike Ross.”

Harvey nods; he figured something like that was going on. “Okay, Mister Ross,” he drawls, “go ahead. Make my day.”

“Funny,” Mike quips. “I never thought of it as a game.”

Harvey grins.

Then Mike launches into his story of failed criminality, winding through a labyrinthine tale of his burnout best friend, his deceased parents, his ailing grandmother, his dreams dashed and his future knocked off the rails by a combination of bad luck and stupid mistakes. He’s smart, Harvey hears it in his turns of phrase, in his regret for the things he’s done and the way they’ve ended up; he’s loyal, both as a grandson and as a friend; he’s ambitious, unafraid to take risks or get his hands dirty; he’s honest, willing to accept accountability for the role he’s played in his own fate.

He’s one in a million.

If only he was a lawyer.

“Look, Mike,” Harvey says once he’s finished, “that’s a hell of a story, but unfortunately we don’t hire people who’ve been accepted at Harvard if they didn’t also _graduate_ from there.”

Mike shakes his head, smiling wanly. “I’m not here for the job,” he assures him. “Like I said, I was just trying to get away from the cops, I’ll leave you alone.”

He gets up, clutching the broken briefcase to his chest, and Harvey scowls darkly as he casts about for some way, any way to make this work.

“Did you really pass the Bar?” he asks.

Mike stops in his tracks and looks back over his shoulder. “Yeah,” he says, “but I mean I didn’t have a character and fitness screening or anything, I don’t have my JD; it was just part of a bet.”

Drawing his lips into a line, Harvey knots his fingers together and fixes his dismayed gaze on the wall. It’s a crazy idea, really, and Jessica won’t go for it in a million years; it’s insane, and she’d be insane to do it, but Harvey would be insane to let this kid go, and he can’t think of any other plan, _so…_

“Alright, listen,” he says, laying his hands flat on the desk. “I’ve got some pull at Harvard Law, and I know your scholarship was revoked, but you did _get_ it, right?”

“Yeah,” Mike trails off, turning back to his vacated chair. Harvey nods.

“This is what’s going to happen,” he directs. “You’re going to stop smoking pot—right now, cold turkey, no exceptions. And this should go without saying, but no _selling_ pot, either. You’re going to cut ties with Trevor, he’s bad news and he’s only keeping you down. You’re going to come with me back to Pearson Hardman and you’re going to introduce yourself to Jessica Pearson, and you and I are going to convince her to give you a Pearson Hardman Scholarship, and you are going to work harder than you’ve ever worked on anything before in your entire life, and you are going to become the best damn lawyer you can be.”

As Harvey’s words sink in, a disbelieving grin steals over Mike’s face; it’s damn infectious, but Harvey works to keep his own expression focused.

“Will that work?” Mike asks, as though this is going to be some kind of secret between the two of them.

Actually, there’s a good chance that it won’t. Applications for the summer internship program the scholarship is tied to have been closed for months, and the firm only ever plans, and budgets, to send one candidate to Harvard at a time. Nevertheless, Harvey folds his hands together and puts on his most self-assured expression.

“We’ll make it work.”

Mike nods voraciously. “I’ll work harder than all those douchebags out there,” he declares, “I’ll become the best lawyer you have ever _seen._ ”

Pulling his laptop towards himself and opening a new email, Harvey shakes his head. “For both our sakes, kid, I sure hope you can put your money where your mouth is.”

Catching Mike’s quick wince out of the corner of his eye, he rests his hands on the keyboard and looks up. “What is it?”

Mike’s gaze darts away. “Money.”

That’s right, Harvey recalls; Mike still needs to pay his grandmother’s nursing home fee.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Okay, how about this,” he says. “I’m going to write you a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, and you’re going to use it to buy your grandmother another year in that fancy nursing home or whatever you’re planning to do to keep her comfortable and healthy. You’re going to work it off at the firm, I’ll take it out of your paychecks until it’s reimbursed in full, and you come to me next time you’re in over your head and you need help taking care of her. You got that?”

For a minute, or possibly a small eternity, Mike just stares at him. Harvey holds his gaze, willing him to understand that this isn’t a joke, this isn’t a game, this is a big fucking risk but also the most exciting thing that’s happened since Jessica pulled Harvey out of the mailroom and sent _him_ off to Harvard to earn his JD.

What goes around comes around and all that.

God, Harvey should pump the breaks before he turns into a walking motivational poster. Or some old lady’s refrigerator magnet.

“Are you sure?” Mike asks eventually, leaning forward into the table. Harvey nods firmly.

“You heard of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner?”

Mike frowns thoughtfully. “They’re that intellectual property firm that started in D.C. in the sixties.”

Impressive. “Sixty-five,” Harvey confirms. “They’ve got a little-known student associate program that I think Jessica might be very interested in hearing more about.”

Mike smiles widely, and Harvey starts typing Jessica a vague request for a meeting at the earliest possible convenience.

Everything’s going to be fine, he tells himself. These are the kinds of risks he’s paid the big bucks to take. Well; okay, maybe not these risks exactly.

But that’s what makes it fun.

\---

“No.”

“Jessica.”

Jessica levels him with that glare she has, the one that reminds him that whatever excuse he’s about to offer, whatever leverage he’s about to try to pull, she’s heard it all before. She’s faced down bigger, badder foes than him, and she’s conquered them all, thank you very much.

“We’ll use Finnegan’s model,” he proposes, “send him to Harvard and keep him on retainer. He’ll be my associate on call.”

“Harvey,” she says incredulously, “this kid couldn’t handle college when that was _all_ he was doing; now you want him to survive Harvard Law and be your associate at the same time?”

“He really wants this,” he insists. “He made a mistake, he made a lot of them, but he knows it, and he wants to turn his life around.”

“He’ll be able to stay at the top of his class?” she challenges. “We can’t afford to take less than the best, and he doesn’t even have his Bachelor’s.”

Harvey waves his hand as though that’s the least of his concerns. “He’s already got two years’ worth of CUNY credits; next semester at Harvard doesn’t start up until the end of the summer, he can finish the rest of a BA before then.”

Shaking her head, Jessica starts chuckling to herself, which is never a good sign.

“Harvey,” she breathes, “this firm hands out one scholarship per year, I’m not going to conjure a second one out of thin air just because you want to give it to some punk with a sob story who you picked up off the _street._ ”

“He’s not some punk,” Harvey swears. “Jessica, this kid is brilliant, he’s eager, he’s quick on his feet; he’s going to make this firm a lot of money. He just needs someone to take a chance on him.”

She sharpens her glare, and he knows she’s made the same connection he did.

“When I hauled your sorry ass out of the mailroom,” she says tightly, “I had a lot less capital at stake than I do now. I had far fewer people relying on me to make the kinds of business decisions that need to be made to keep this firm running. I had a gang of old white men above me who knew just how forward-thinking it would make them look to promote a black woman to a partnership position.”

Harvey shrugs feebly. She’s got a point.

But he can’t just let this go.

“Take it out of my bonus,” he proclaims impulsively. “It won’t cost the firm a cent and I swear to god, Jessica, this kid is going to be worth it.”

Her frown twitches at the corner, and now she gets it. Now she’s taking him seriously.

Folding her hands and laying them down on her stomach, Jessica leans back in her chair, eyeing him as though they’re meeting for the first time and she hasn’t finished sizing him up yet. Hasn’t finished deciding how much of a threat he is, or how much of an asset. Harvey does his best to remember what this is all for, what he has at stake, and holds her gaze as steadily as he can manage.

Finally, finally, she smiles.

“This isn’t a promise of follow-through,” she warns. “This isn’t a commitment to docking your pay to put him through law school, because that is the _only_ way this is going to happen, but I will say it’s been awhile since I’ve seen you this passionate about anything.”

Harvey breaks character with a relieved grin, and she nods slowly.

“I assume he’s waiting in your office.”

“You think I’d come in here unprepared?”

Jessica smirks.

“Alright. I’ll meet your boy.”

Immediately turning on his heel, Harvey walks briskly down the hall to his office at the opposite corner of the floor to fetch Mike and hopes with all his might that Donna hasn’t said anything to scare him off just yet.

“He’s touching your balls,” Donna tattles as Harvey draws near. Peering through the glass walls of his office, Harvey watches Mike glide his hands reverently over the signed Michael Jordan basketball at the end of the row of basketballs signed by a variety of other famous players, taking some pride in the fact that despite his ministrations, he hasn’t moved it an inch off its post.

“He’s allowed,” Harvey decides.

Donna quirks her eyebrows and doesn’t say a word.

\---

Harvey should have known that Jessica wouldn’t let him in on her meeting with Mike. He also should have known that she wouldn’t allow him to lurk outside her office to spy on them and try, surely in vain, to read their lips and their body language to determine how well Mike was stacking up.

He also should have known, although he’ll forgive himself for this one, that Jessica would send Mike home as soon as she finished with him, and proceed to wait two full hours before calling Harvey to deliver her verdict.

The instant his phone rings, Harvey snatches it up, desperate for an excuse to stop wracking his brain for anything more he could have done to sway Jessica’s opinion or any better preparation he could have given Mike before sending him into the dragon’s den.

“Jessica,” he says with forced and surely unconvincing calm. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Any more than I already have?” she taunts. Before he can fumble for a response, she scoffs and takes pity on him.

“He’s good,” she allows. “He’s got a lot to learn, but he’s very good. And he’s got heart; I can see why you like him.”

Harvey clicks his tongue to camouflage his tension. “I have a hard time believing you’re going to be swayed by his heart.”

“I’m not, but I think between the two of you, I might just have one fully functioning human being worth keeping on the payroll.”

Harvey chuckles. “Hey,” he concedes, “whatever works.”

Jessica makes an apprehensive noise, and Harvey baits his breath.

“Alright,” she says, “I’ll tell you what. You call your people at Harvard and get your boy on the waiting list for next year. If— _if_ he can piece together a BA by the end of the summer, if he keeps his GPA above a three-seven, if he pulls this degree out of thin air…I’ll let you have him. Student associate. He’ll be held to the same standards as every other associate at this firm, and he’ll have to keep his grades up, and he’ll have to work here full time during the summer, and I’ll need a commitment of at least five years at the firm after graduation, _and_ he’ll be your responsibility, but by god, Harvey, if you want him that badly…”

Harvey grins.

“You won’t regret it.”

“See that I don’t.”

Harvey hangs up his phone and immediately starts planning the lecture he’ll deliver to Mike first thing tomorrow morning. The first draft, a rushed and hectic thing, takes only about fifteen minutes to pen; as Harvey begins to scribble edits and revisions in the margins, it gradually dawns on him how much he’s asking of the kid, and just how fucked he’ll be if Jessica makes him find an actual Harvard graduate to serve as his associate even though the hiring season is over.

This had better work out.

\---

Mike looks like Christmas, his birthday, his grandmother’s birthday, and about fifteen other holidays have all come about at the same time when Harvey shows him the terms of the offer.

“Jessica has friends with the city who pulled some strings for you,” Harvey explains, “and since you finished two years at CUNY before your expulsion, they’re revoking the ninety-credit transfer limit. If you really push yourself over the next few months, you can finish your degree, but Mike, let me tell you, this isn’t elementary school. This is going to be hard work. Long hours. High pressure.”

“I survived two years of this already,” Mike dismisses, “I can handle it.”

“I’m not talking about undergrad,” Harvey warns, “because I know you’ll get through undergrad. I’m talking about when you’re at Harvard, being my associate.”

Mike nods. “I was working part time and taking a full course load when I was at CUNY last time,” he says, “I’m pretty sure I can manage.”

“‘Pretty sure’ isn’t going to cut it,” Harvey snaps. “I’m putting my ass on the line for you, Mike; I’m putting my _reputation_ on the line, I need you to work harder on this, I need you to be better _at_ this than you’ve been at anything before in your entire life, do you understand?”

Mike gets a spooked sort of look in his eye; he’s not scared off by the job description, Harvey’s pretty sure, but he might be having some second thoughts about working for Harvey himself.

Harvey puts his hand to his forehead and sighs.

“Look,” he says, “I didn’t even want an associate in the first place. I only set up those interviews because Jessica said I had to. You’re not what I’d call a typical candidate and this sure as hell isn’t a typical arrangement, but I think we’d all like to see it work out, so I really need to know that you know how hard you’re going to have to push yourself. I need you to understand that failure isn’t an option.”

He isn’t sure what he’s expecting after all that; he doesn’t know what he expects Mike to do, what he wants him to say. Another platitude, a faceless promise that he’ll try as hard as he can, that he’ll always do his very best isn’t going to cut it this time, but Harvey doesn’t know what more he can ask of this poor kid. To his credit, Mike has the good sense not to reply with something categorically inane, but Harvey thinks his silence might be almost equally infuriating.

Then, just before Harvey completely loses his mind from the undue stress of everything that hasn’t even happened yet, Mike’s face takes on a stormy sort of quality, profoundly serious and utterly dedicated to everything Harvey’s asking of him, whatever the consequences. Whatever hardships he’s committing himself to.

“You’re sure as hell not gonna lose on my watch.”

Harvey nods slowly. That was it, somehow; that was the right thing.

They just might be able to pull this off.

\---

Harvey’s determination to ignore any doubts he may have harbored about Mike’s ability to complete his bachelor’s in time to get to Harvard is helped along somewhat by the patent case that lands on his desk Tuesday morning. It’s nothing, really, some kind of telephone thing having been invented by a perpetually nervous and thoroughly out-of-his-depth guy in his early thirties, but bizarre complications keep arising seemingly out of nowhere, and then Harvey gets caught up in ousting the new CEO of McKernon Motors, and then Jessica’s ex-husband shows up with some kind of shady treatment drug case, and it isn’t until April, near the end of spring semester, that he finds a moment to get in touch with Mike for more than a cursory description of the next piece of information he needs dug up or brief he needs written.

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep after dinner,” Mike confesses the moment he picks up the call, “but I did, and then I didn’t wake up until eight thirty, and it’s the only time I’ve missed class all semester, but it was the day our final papers were due, so I was docked for handing it in a day late, and I’m so sorry, but even though I only got a three-eight on the paper, I still got a four-oh in the class, somehow, so I’m really, really sorry, but everything turned out okay, and I swear to god it won’t happen again.”

Harvey glances perplexedly down at the phone’s display screen for a moment to make sure he’s called the right number.

“Hello, Mike,” he ventures cautiously. “Nice to hear from you. It’s been awhile, I take it you’re doing well.”

“Uh…”

Harvey leans back in his desk chair and scrolls through the copy of Mike’s transcript he’s pulled up on his computer. “So I see you’re keeping your grades up,” he says. “Looks like you’ll have all your credits by the end of the summer.”

“Yeah,” Mike stutters, “I uh, I’ll…be fine. Um.”

Harvey smirks as Mike continues to fumble.

“So…how are _you?_ ”

Harvey puts a great deal of effort into not laughing aloud.

“I’m fine,” he answers. “Better than you, from the sound of it.”

“No, no,” Mike rushes, “I’m fine. I can handle it. This is nothing. This— I’m fine.”

That’s definitely not true, but Harvey doesn’t think he has it in him at the moment to derail Mike’s ardent fortitude.

“You know you’re not going to be able to attend the graduation ceremony,” he warns. “Orientation at Harvard starts in the middle of August.”

“Thank god,” Mike deadpans, and this time Harvey does laugh, Mike’s soft snicker echoing in the background.

“Alright,” Harvey chuckles, “let me know if you need anything.”

“I will.”

Harvey skims over Mike’s transcript again as he ends the call. Mike won’t ask for anything, Harvey knows that much; he’s smart and he’s hardworking, but he’s also proud, and stubborn, and eager to impress.

This kid’s going places.

\---

“So how’s your boy?”

“Don’t you have some actual work to do?”

Donna scoffs, strutting over to Harvey’s desk and leaning over the papers he has strewn across it. “You went out on the longest and shakiest limb I’ve ever seen for this kid and he was the only thing you’d talk about for ten months after you met him, and I have not heard you mention his name _once_ since he started at Harvard.”

Harvey makes a point of continuing to read the brief in his hand. “You counted the months?”

Donna leans in closer. “I don’t think you understand what I mean when I say ‘only thing you’d talk about.’”

“If you must know,” Harvey says, skimming the last page before he sets the document down in front of him, “he’s doing just fine. He was the one who found the connection between Dreibach and Aberdeen Solutions.”

“That was how you won the case,” she recalls. Harvey nods.

“He’s good.”

“Sounds like he’s doing better than ‘just fine,’ so why the radio silence?”

It’s a fair question. It’s an obvious question, and Harvey can’t blame her for the fact that he walked right into it. Nor can he blame her for the fact that he doesn’t have an answer ready on the tip of his tongue.

Of course, the longer his silence stretches on, the loftier her smile becomes.

“Okay,” she says eventually, stepping back with a bit of a swagger in her gait. “Okay.”

“No,” he cuts in. “Whatever you’re thinking, no.”

“I’m not thinking anything,” she assures him, raising her hands.

“I don’t want to put too much pressure on the kid,” he says spontaneously. “He got a ‘Pass’ on his first Criminal Law paper, I thought he was gonna have a heart attack.”

Donna frowns. “What’s wrong with passing?”

“A ‘Pass’ isn’t a ‘High Pass.’”

Donna wrings her hand goadingly, and Harvey curls his lip.

“Jessica put a little fear of god in him,” he says. “She wanted to make sure he didn’t think anyone was going to be cutting him any slack, that he knew he’d be just as accountable for his work as every other associate, and I think he took it as a personal challenge.”

“He can’t be just as good as everyone else,” Donna surmises. “He has to be the best.”

Harvey pointlessly shuffles the papers on his desk; about half of them need to be put through the shredder.

“He will be.”

\---

For ten days near the end of December, Mike arrives at the offices of Pearson Hardman at precisely six thirty every morning, taking his leave no earlier than eleven o’clock at night. Harvey’s proud of him, if not a little worried; considering the fact that the kid lives in Brooklyn, commuting back and forth every day, he can’t be getting more than five hours’ sleep a night, if that.

Then, on December thirty-first, Mike heads back to Harvard for the start of winter term, and Louis swans into Harvey’s office like he owns the place.

“So I saw you got yourself a pony,” he says.

Barely sparing him a glance, Harvey pulls his laptop closer and opens a new word document.

“I got myself an associate,” he corrects, locking his eyes on the screen.

“Hm.” Louis lowers his gaze to the floor and folds his hands behind his back. “You know the associates are under my purview.”

“Not this one,” Harvey replies with all the indifference he can muster.

“He’s got an eye for detail,” Louis goes on. “It’s amazing what he accomplished in only a few days at the office.”

Harvey narrows his eyes at the still-blank document. “That’s why I hired him.”

“Uh-huh.” Pacing forward, Louis raises his eyes, looking up at Harvey from under his lowered lashes. “He could be a great asset to this firm.”

What the hell is Louis trying to pull? He’s got an angle, obviously, but Harvey can’t figure out what it is.

“He’s a great asset to me,” Harvey says. “That’s enough for now.”

Louis smiles coolly. “He could set a great example for the associates if you’d let him; I could show him a thing or two, maybe when he’s back in town for spring break.”

“He works for _me,_ Louis,” Harvey snarls. “You’re not parading him around the bullpen just because you can’t control your children.”

“They deserve to see what a proper stallion looks like.”

“He’s not a _horse,_ Louis, he’s _my guy!_ ”

Harvey’s temples begin to hurt for how intensely he’s narrowing his eyes and furrowing his brow, and he thinks he might have just slammed his hand down on a pen, but Louis’s mild surprise has already segued into cocky amusement, and what’s so fucking funny, exactly? Does Louis think he suddenly has something on Harvey somehow? On Mike? Jessica already knows about the pot, there’s nothing more to hold against him there, and despite all the work Harvey is piling on him, Mike is still pulling consistently high marks, so what’s the problem?

But Louis only promises to keep that in mind, leaving with one last little smirk and closing the door behind him.

Harvey takes a heaving breath and sinks back into his chair.

He still isn’t sure what just happened, but whatever it was…probably wasn’t good.

\---

“How many people would put a bounty out on my head if I said working here was too easy?”

Harvey sets aside the briefs he’s reviewing and grins as Mike saunters into his office. “Every single one of the associates to start, but I’m sure you could work your way up the food chain.”

Mike offers Harvey a summary of his work on the nurse’s strike that Daniel Hardman drew him into the moment he arrived at the office for his first day of summer vacation. “It’s the weirdest thing,” he says. “I have actual free time. Like, actual free time, and I have no idea what to do with it.”

“You saying I’m not giving you enough to do?” Harvey asks wryly, folding his arms on his desk and settling over them as Mike shakes his head frantically.

“God no,” he says, lowering himself into one of the chairs on the client side of Harvey’s desk. “I mean, this case is complicated as hell, and I get that Jessica and Hardman are trying to bury each other, so that doesn’t help, but I’m working on _one thing._ Everything I’m researching has something to do with everything else I’m researching, everything I’m writing is about this one case. It’s insane. Good insane,” he rushes to add, “but. Insane.”

Harvey nods, looking down at the summary Mike turned in. There isn’t anything on the first page that he doesn’t already know, but the language is just about perfect, clear and succinct and nicely organized; it’ll be a useful thing to have down the road, for sure.

“You’re getting better,” he says, tapping the paper. “The writing, it’s better than the stuff you were turning in during the schoolyear.”

Clasping his hands together, Mike smiles awkwardly and shifts in his seat.

“Thank you.”

That’s a bit of a strange response; Mike usually does well with earned praise. Harvey cocks his head and leans back in his chair, bracing his hands on the edge of the desk.

“Everything alright?”

“Huh?” Mike’s eyes widen a little. “Yeah! Yeah,” he babbles, “yeah, everything’s fine, I’m gonna—I’m gonna call Grammy, double check that she’s okay with me taking that nurse to visit her tomorrow.”

Harvey nods again. “Okay,” he says, “keep me updated.”

Mike makes an agreeable noise and heads out of Harvey’s office, presumably back to his cubicle in the bullpen. Harvey drums his fingers on the summary as he looks after him.

Is Mike having some kind of trouble at Harvard? Well, if he says he’s handling everything, Harvey can’t just stop giving him the work. But…

Maybe he can start handling a little more of the grunt work himself. Not as a favor to Mike or anything, not because he’s trying to be nice to him.

Just for fun.

\---

It’s been nine years since he started working for Jessica, and still, every time she calls Harvey in for a meeting, he feels like he’s being sent to the principal’s office.

This time is, of course, no different. Rapping his knuckles against the doorframe, he steps into her office apprehensively. “You wanted to see me?”

Jessica looks at him with an impressive combination of surprise and ennui, giving Harvey the sense that despite having summoned him, she wasn’t actually expecting him to show up, but that now that he’s here, she’s sure as hell going to rake him over the coals.

“Harvey,” she greets him. “Nice of you to drop by.”

“How could I refuse.”

She smiles, but Harvey doesn’t have enough time to decide whether it’s friendly or sharklike before she beckons him forward, prompting him to step up to the far side of her desk.

“We haven’t spoken in awhile,” she says, despite the fact that it’s been only a few days since she chastised him for coping with Donna’s departure by playing poker. Harvey smiles grimly, bracing himself for the worst as Jessica sets her hands on the armrests of her chair.

“How’s Mike Ross?”

Harvey’s shoulders twitch back, and he sticks his hands in his pockets in a weak effort to conceal the startled reflex. “Fine,” he says. “He’s doing fine.”

“Mm-hm,” Jessica dismisses. “When was the last time you spoke to him?”

Harvey frowns. “Last week, right after Keith signed his company over to Thomas Walsh. I sent him the security footage to review, he got it back to me the next day with documentation to prove Keith was inebriated when he signed the contract.”

Jessica merely arches her eyebrows, glancing down at a paper on her desk that Harvey can’t read; what the hell is going on here, is something wrong with Mike? Is he in trouble? Who does Harvey need to kill, whose life does he need to ruin?

“His reviews are consistent,” she notes. Harvey wonders if the paper is a transcript.

“He’s keeping his grades up,” he says, and she nods.

“And he’s handling all the work you’re giving him?”

Harvey frowns. “I just said he nailed the security footage thing.”

“I said ‘ _all_ the work.’”

Looking off to the side, Harvey tries to remember what else he’s given Mike since he sent back the security documentation. The case isn’t resolved just yet, but there isn’t a whole lot more that can be done long distance, for the time being.

“He’s doing fine,” he says.

“Harvey.” Jessica picks up the paper in front of her and turns it around to show that it isn’t a transcript so much as what appears to be a list of call detail records. “You’re forwarding your calls to his cell phone.”

Oh, right. Yeah, well, there is that.

“Cameron isn’t working out?” she asks wryly. He shrugs.

“We didn’t exactly click.”

“Harvey, I let you hire Mike to be your associate,” she reminds him. “Not your secretary.”

Harvey sighs tersely. How to explain that that isn’t what this is about? He would never ask Mike to do his filing, or his scheduling, or any kind of menial shit; fielding his messages is just a faster way to clue Mike in on Harvey’s caseload, to keep him as up to date as possible on the work coming across his desk and the seemingly random twists and turns his ongoing suits are about to take. Plus the fact that hearing from Mike every day makes him feel like he’s closer, makes Harvey feel more secure, especially since Donna’s left; he can rely on Mike, he can count on him to be there, to do the work that needs to be done and then some. To make life and everything else that much easier.

Of course, there’s still the fact that he’s forwarding his calls to Mike’s cell phone.

“I’ll take care of it,” he says. Jessica nods.

“Yes, you will.”

It’s as clear a dismissal as he’s likely to get, so Harvey walks out of the office briskly, his steps becoming gradually more shuffling as he nears his own office on the other side of the floor. Cameron looks up attentively as he passes, but Harvey ignores him completely, closing his door and pressing the button to lower the blackout shades over his glass walls.

It’s twelve fifteen; Mike should be at lunch around now, or skipping it to do some research or work on a paper.

“Harvey Specter’s office.”

Harvey coughs a laugh at the automatic response.

“Hi, Mike.”

“Uh—” Harvey hears some papers shuffle and what sounds like something heavy falling on a rug as Mike fumbles with whatever he’s doing. “Harvey, hi, what’s up? Everything okay, is something wrong?”

“Everything’s fine,” he assures him. “You’re doing fine. I just talked to Jessica, she told me to stop forwarding my calls to you.”

“But that’s how I found out about Walsh!” he protests. “Oh—shit, Harvey, I forgot, you got a call from White and Case making a job offer, for some reason? And I told them I’d let you know, but I figured you’d just tell them to go to hell and I…forgot about it?”

White and Case? Harvey smirks. They must be restructuring. If they think he would ever leave Pearson Hardman, their HR department is definitely in need of a major overhaul.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “It’s probably better you let that one slide. No, Jessica just wants you to focus on the more…lawyerly parts of your job.”

“I can handle it!”

“Mike, this isn’t a negotiation,” Harvey says. “It’s also not a condemnation of your abilities, you did everything I asked you to do and you did it well. But she’s got a point, you need to be focused on your studies and your work, and it’s unfair for me to ask you to do Cameron’s job too just because I don’t like him.”

“Aw,” Mike says distractedly, “you make me feel so special.”

Harvey grins until a sudden clattering sound makes him jerk upright in his seat, his hand stiffening around the receiver.

“Mike?”

“Uh—bye!”

The line abruptly goes dead, and Harvey sits blinking at the wall for a few seconds before he tenderly hangs up the receiver.

The fuck was that about?

\---

Harvey makes it a full week before he has to call Mike again. It’s a nice combination of enough time for Mike to cool his head after whatever happened during their last conversation, and exactly the right timing for Harvey to vent about his intense hatred of Travis Tanner. As for Mike, Harvey imagines it’ll be a good learning experience, hearing about how seedy the inner workings of a major law firm can get when the public isn’t watching and no one’s shares of stock are being threatened.

He calls at twelve fifteen, for the symmetry of it all.

The phone rings six times.

“Hi,” Mike finally answers, speaking as though someone’s just offended him. Harvey wonders what he’s interrupting.

“Everything alright?” he asks, momentarily forgetting the reason for his call. Mike sighs into the speaker and Harvey winces at the crackling whistle.

“I’m fine,” Mike says in a rush. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine. What do you need, is this about Tanner?”

Of course it’s about Tanner. Maybe Mike isn’t the one who needs to be taught a lesson.

“I might’ve punched him,” Harvey dismisses.

“You _punched_ him?” Mike marvels.

“Not important right now,” Harvey says. “Tanner’s still trying to charge me with fraud and my trial date’s coming up, I need some dirt on him that’ll convince him to settle.”

“Anything you need,” Mike says instantly. Harvey raises his brow; that was awfully eager. If a simple assignment like this seems so enticing, maybe it’s a sign that the work at Harvard is getting to be a little much for him.

“You sure you have time for this?”

“If the alternative is you getting disbarred, I have all the time in the world.”

Harvey smiles to himself. Whatever the reason for Mike’s enthusiasm, it’s nice to have someone so unreservedly on his side, with all this other shit going on around him.

“Don’t kill yourself,” he advises, and Mike chuckles.

“No worries,” he says. “I’ve already pulled two all-nighters this semester, I can handle myself. You know what, coffee-tea doesn’t taste nearly as bad as you might think.”

“Do me a favor,” Harvey requests, “don’t tell me how you found that out.”

“If you add sugar, it’s not even that hard to drink it.”

“You’re going to have a heart attack before your thirtieth birthday.”

“Joke’s on you, I’m thirty-one.”

Harvey nearly drops the phone. “What? No, you’re not.”

Mike tsks loudly. “May eighth, nineteen eighty-one, baby!”

May eighth? Harvey tips his head back to look up at his office ceiling. Unless he’s very much mistaken, that’s right in the middle of exam period for electives; Mike won’t be able to afford any time for a celebration. Not that thirty-two is a major milestone, but the kid’s—well, maybe not such a kid, but he’s been working his ass off for nearly two years now and he hasn’t complained once. He wouldn’t have even mentioned his birthday if Harvey hadn’t set him up for it.

“Don’t call me ‘baby,’” he says idly.

Mike sucks in a sharp breath. “Shit, sorry, it just sort of… I didn’t mean—anything.”

Harvey shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. Let me know when you’ve got something on Tanner.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, “yeah, I’m all over it.”

“Good.”

Mike hangs the phone up rather harshly, but Harvey’s less concerned with that than he is with this new piece of trivia about Mike.

Final exam period ends on the seventeenth, Friday, and Mike will be back in town by Saturday at the latest; okay, so that’s still a ways away.

He has nearly three months to think of the perfect present.

\---

“Donna, have you seen Mike yet today?”

“Not since the last time you asked me.”

Harvey checks the clock at the corner of his computer screen; that was nearly fifteen minutes ago, and now it’s almost eight. Where _is_ he? What happened to showing up every morning, without fail, at six thirty on the dot? Maybe the stress really is getting to him; Harvey should’ve known he couldn’t keep up such an incredible pace forever, but Mike never said anything to the contrary. He seemed fine, everything was fine.

“I’m calling him,” Harvey decides. “Donna—”

“As far as anyone knows,” she cuts him off, “you’re out of reach. I’ve got you, don’t worry.”

If only he could afford not to.

“Thanks.”

Harvey picks up his office phone and dials Mike’s number from memory without needing to look down at the keys.

_Ring…_

_Ring…_

_Ring…_

“This is Mike Ross. At the tone, leave your name and message. I’ll get back to you.”

He hangs up before the tone sounds, glowering at the receiver. Did Mike ignore the call because it was from the office? Is he playing hooky for some unfathomably stupid reason? He isn’t back with Trevor, is he, he isn’t smoking pot again.

Harvey picks up his cell phone this time and presses the second number on his speed dial.

“This is Mike—”

God _dammit!_ Throwing his arms down on the desk in a huff, Harvey drop his phone and sneers at the wall. Mike’s already made it through nearly two full years of law school and he’s doing _great;_ his professors love him, at least one having tried to tempt him away from his summer obligations at Pearson Hardman for an internship elsewhere, and his grades have been consistently high across the board. Whenever he’s at the firm, Louis keeps trying to bargain with Harvey for him, which is never going to work, obviously, but is a nice enough demonstration of Mike’s obvious value; Jessica’s fallen for him, Harvey’s pretty sure, letting him get away with just about anything Harvey asks of him and giving him all the resources he asks for to do it; Donna teases Harvey about him at least once a day, as sure a sign of affection as any.

So what the fuck is going on?

“Donna,” Harvey announces to the speakerphone he knows she listens in on, “I’m going to Brooklyn, tell Jessica…something, I don’t care.”

“Is Mike okay?” she asks, looking over her cubicle wall with wide eyes as Harvey shrugs his jacket on.

“I’m sure as hell gonna find out.”

Out in front of the office building, Ray is somehow already waiting, and Harvey takes a moment to silently thank Donna for her foresight and vocally thank Ray for his punctuality and reliability, reciting Mike’s home address and asking him to step on it. Ray nods affirmatively, and Harvey knows they won’t be breaking any traffic laws, but at least Ray understands the urgency.

Unsurprisingly, the area they end up in, which isn’t quite on but is barely a stone’s throw from the East River, isn’t exactly the nicest neighborhood; Harvey wonders if he should’ve left his cufflinks at the office. There isn’t much time to dwell on the conundrum before Ray pulls up to a grungy building with a large “15” printed on the door and Harvey jumps out, hoping he remembers which one is Mike’s apartment. Two B, isn’t it? Yeah, he thinks so.

Of course the building is a walk-up. Resigning to his fate, Harvey takes the stairs two at a time—it isn’t difficult, they aren’t steep—and reaches the second floor in hardly a moment, walking down the short corridor to Mike’s unit and banging his fist against the door.

“Mike,” he shouts. “Mike, tell me you’re in there. It’s Harvey, Mike, open up.”

Maybe he shouldn’t try calling to Mike while he’s also knocking for him, but he can’t seem to bring himself to stop doing either.

“Mike!”

Slamming his fist against the door one last time, Harvey turns on his heel and shoves his hand up into his hair. Dammit, if Mike isn’t here, then where the hell is he? At a hospital somewhere? In a ditch by the side of the road? Locked up in some junkie’s basement and being held for ransom? No, no, Harvey would’ve gotten the call by now, but—what if they don’t know about Harvey, what if they called Mike’s grandmother? She has hardly a cent to her name, Mike is just about fucked, but if Harvey can remember the name of the nursing home she’s holed up in, he can go up there and—and—

The tumbler clicks and clatters as Mike opens the door.

Harvey opens his mouth to shout some more, to yell at Mike, to scold him, reprimand him, tell him just how worried _sick_ he’s been, he doesn’t even know how to put it to _words—_ but, well.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything at all.

Mike looks like he’d rather die than hear it, anyway.

“Mike,” Harvey murmurs. Mike goes so far as to try to smile, Harvey guesses from the way his mouth widens pointedly, but eventually he just stops hanging off the doorframe and steps back to let Harvey inside.

He stands with his back to him, but Harvey hears the zipper of his hoodie close and see him stuff his hands into the sleeves.

“My grandmother died.”

Oh, god.

Harvey sighs.

“When?”

Mike laughs hollowly. “Two days ago. I was taking my Corporations final and she was here, alone, dying.” He sighs, a rattling breath. “I haven’t seen her since winter break. And even then I just stopped by the home for an hour, I didn’t, I didn’t have time; I talked to her on the phone last week, I told her when I’d be home for spring break, I told her I’d be working at the firm every day and she said she wanted to come by for a visit, she said… She said she wanted to see me in my natural habitat.”

Mike drops his head back, stumbling when it makes him lose his center of balance, and Harvey steps closer, hoping it’s enough just to be there.

“She said she was proud of me,” he rambles. “She said she always knew I had it in me to do something great with my life, and now I’m going back to school and getting my degree and she…she wishes my parents were around to see it, because she knows they’d be proud of me. Doing what I was always meant to do, and that even if this isn’t how she imagined it would be, she’s glad I’m on the right track.”

Harvey clenches his teeth.

“Mike.”

“She wanted to meet you,” he says a little louder, waving vaguely over his shoulder in Harvey’s direction. “She wanted to meet the hardass who took a chance on her fuckup grandson, she wanted to ask you what you saw in me that made you do something so stupid. She wanted to thank you for seeing it, she said it’s about time someone did, and with all the shit I say about you, you must be doing something right to keep me coming back.”

_Anything you need._

Harvey closes his eyes, pressing his hand to his temple.

“She sounds like a wonderful woman,” he says.

Mike sits on the couch, staring at the clutter of the apartment across from him.

“I’ve never felt like an orphan before now,” he says tightly.

Harvey wonders what he’s supposed to say to that. Nothing, maybe.

Mike shakes his head back and forth, so many times that Harvey loses track.

“Take the day,” Harvey says, which is inadequate in the worst way except that he doesn’t have much else to offer, and Mike might as well have one less thing to worry about.

Mike scoffs. “You mean I’m not fired?” he says as though he’d already made plans to never go back to the office.

“Mike.” Harvey sits on the couch, pressed up against the armrest to give Mike his space. “You’re allowed to exist outside of the job.”

Mike sits in silence, staring at the clutter of the apartment across from him.

Harvey thinks about looking over at him, about watching him, except that it feels intrusive and voyeuristic, and the last thing he wants to do right now is push Mike somewhere he doesn’t want to go.

Mike’s voice trembles when he speaks.

“Harvey.”

Harvey does look over then, moving just enough that he’s no longer flattened against the armrest.

Mike bites his lip, staring at the clutter of the apartment.

His voice is thick when he speaks.

“I…”

Harvey parts his lips, his brows knitting as he thinks about reaching for him, about setting his hand on his shoulder, except that might be unwelcome, and the last thing he wants to do right now is make Mike feel defensive. Mike braces his elbows on his knees and leans forward, pressing his hands to his face; his trembling shoulders precede the sound of his choked weeping, and Harvey winces. It’s reflex that makes him set his hand on Mike’s back, an instinct he doesn’t think he’s ever used before, but Mike doesn’t seem to mind.

After a bit, after a few wracking gasps, Mike twists his body around, leaning into Harvey blindly, and it’s compassion that makes Harvey slide his arm around Mike’s shoulders, and he thinks it’s probably love that makes him coax Mike forward to huddle against his chest and cry.

“Okay,” he whispers as Mike tucks his head down. “Okay.”

After awhile, enough moments and minutes of gasping sobs that Harvey doesn’t bother to keep track, Mike wraps his arms around Harvey’s waist, content merely to be held, to be calmed and soothed by Harvey’s presence, a far greater comfort than any words he might think to use. Harvey cradles the back of Mike’s head and sighs.

When Mike leans back, trying to sit up under his own power, Harvey lets him go. His eyes are puffy, rimmed and shot with red; his lips are wet and bitten, the skin torn in a few places. He tries to smile, and Harvey shakes his head. No need for that.

“I’ll stay if you want me to,” he offers. Mike lowers his gaze to the narrow space between them.

“Thank you,” he says, wiping saliva from around his mouth. Harvey nods.

“You want anything?” he asks. “Need anything?”

Mike looks at the space between them and picks at the fabric of the cushions.

“Can we go back to the office this afternoon?”

“Sure,” Harvey says. “You need something? Should I ask Donna to have it delivered?”

Mike shakes his head.

“I want to get back to work.”

Harvey tries to smile, but it might come out a little too forlorn to be convincing.

“Whatever you want.”

Mike nods at the narrow space between them.

\---

Saturday, March twenty-third, Harvey sits in one of the tasteful black leather armchairs in his beautifully elegant living room with a hearty glass of scotch in his hand and thinks quite seriously about offering to drive Mike back to Cambridge tomorrow. The kid’s spent the last week throwing himself headfirst into his work, blasting through every brief, every meeting, every research project Harvey’s assigned him, showing up early and leaving late such that if he divulged that he’d spent every night at his desk, Harvey would be hard pressed to argue otherwise.

It’s been a good week for him, professionally, and a productive one for Harvey; Harvey should be grateful, he should be proud. He should be happy for Mike, learning so much and doing so well.

He knows why it’s happening, is the thing; he knows why Mike has been on fire, dedicating himself heart and soul to the job. He’s trying to distract himself from feeling everything, feeling anything, the memory of his grandmother still fresh in his mind and the guilt of not being there when she needed him most cutting deep into his heart. That’s a fallacy, of course, being that she died of natural causes—heart attack, if he remembers right—and there was nothing in the world Mike could have done for her that he didn’t do, no one he could have paid off and nowhere he could have sent her. The guilt is misplaced, the regrets are false.

The pain is real.

He wonders if there exists a procedure for one citizen to put another on suicide watch. Probably not; if he asked, the recommendation would probably just be a lot of phone calls and home visits.

Shaking his head, the sprawl of opulence before him blurring as his vision goes indifferently out of focus, he takes a sip of scotch and decides that there’s no danger there. Not really. It’s all in his head.

It would be too impractical to follow Mike back to Harvard, and anyway, he doesn’t have the time or the leverage to take two months away from the office. Plus it would be unfair to Mike, to have Harvey hovering over him every minute of every day, treating him like, what, like a disobedient child.

Everything will be fine.

Harvey sets his scotch down on the coffee table and fishes his cell phone out of his pocket.

“Hey Mike.”

“Harvey.” A soft click, and then silence; the television turned off, probably. “Everything okay?”

Harvey smiles.

“Just wanted to say hi.”

\---

It’s a delicate balance Harvey finds himself maintaining in the coming months, doing his best to give Mike enough work to keep him occupied but not so much that he can’t manage the studying required of a 2L in the throes of exam season without resorting to drinking gallons of disgustingly potent coffee-tea. Fortunately, none of the cases coming down the line are particularly time-sensitive; Mike’s turnaround time is as quick as ever, but Harvey feels better for not having to hand them over with a tight deadline.

Of course it’s on Tuesday, May seventh, which Harvey happens to know is the very same day as Mike’s Corporations Section B1 final exam, that Robert Zane drops a ten-pound weight on one of the plates of that delicate balance and everything goes straight to hell.

“Zane’s daughter is a paralegal here,” Harvey relays to Mike during their regular weekly check-in. “You might know her, her name’s Rachel, Rachel Zane; she got herself assigned to the case, and she’s doing pretty good work so far, but I’ve never seen them together, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen when Robert finds out she’s on the opposing team.”

Mike hums thoughtfully. “Did she ask to be put on the case or did it just sort of happen?”

Harvey flips through a sheaf of notes compiled by one of Jessica’s favorite associates whose name he doesn’t remember. “Apparently she requested it,” he reads, “but she and her father had lunch about a week before she put in for the assignment, that might have something to do with why. You think she’s aiming for sabotage?”

“Rachel Zane,” Mike muses, “I met her back in December; she’s pretty loyal to the firm, she respects the hell out of Jessica. I don’t think she’d do something like that.”

Harvey grunts uncertainly. “We’ll see,” he says. “Sorry to be dropping this on you right now, but we thought we had a good thing going with Folsom’s guy Portis before he up and died on us, and now Zane’s cut eight million off the settlement and I’m still not sure what he’s got on us that makes him think we’re going to go along with that.”

“You rejected the new deal?”

“Of course I did. Jessica’s meeting with Zane tomorrow and I bet she’ll figure out what he thinks his ace in the hole is, but until then there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do.”

Mike clicks his tongue. “So why are you telling me about it?”

Harvey drums the pads of his fingers on his laptop keyboard and closes his eyes wearily. Mike is under a lot of stress; he’s allowed to be snippy, and it’s a reasonable question. “I get the sense this case isn’t going to be resolved overnight,” he says, “so I figured I’d give you a heads up about what you’ll be walking into when you come back for the summer.”

Mike doesn’t have anything to say to that. The ambient noise of the dormitory and his occasionally audible breathing let Harvey know the line hasn’t gone dead, but apparently he’s not too eager to carry on this conversation. It’s okay; Harvey doesn’t particularly enjoy having to have it, either.

Mike sighs.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Thank you. Thanks for telling me. For uh. Warning me.”

Harvey smiles.

“Exams going okay?”

Mike laughs awkwardly. “One more to go. I’m still alive, so I guess that means something.”

Gallows humor. Harvey supposes he’s allowed.

“Call me if you need anything.”

Mike sighs.

\---

As predicted, the Folsom Foods suit is still well underway when Mike returns to the firm for the summer, but he does a truly admirable job diving straight into the work, bringing himself up to speed on the details so far and quickly becoming Harvey’s number two.

It’s barely a week after he comes back that Harvey finds himself ambling down the hall to the labyrinthine file room and wondering, not for the first time, why the hell they haven’t gotten with the times and gone digital already. He tries to remember the last time he had cause to visit the dusty old cavern; it’s been awhile, certainly, one of the perks of partnership being that he can always pawn menial research off onto one associate or another. Nevertheless, it isn’t as though he’s banned, and Jessica might think it odd to see him there, but she isn’t going to be stopping by just to judge him.

He follows the clatter of computer keys and the rustling of tops being thrown off of banker boxes to find Mike huddled halfway down one of the rows near the back of the room, surrounded by stacks of papers and file folders and balancing a laptop on his knee.

Harvey raps his knuckle against one of the steel shelves and sticks his free hand into his pocket as Mike looks up with a start.

“Haven’t seen you in awhile,” Harvey comments. “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” Mike says dully, turning back to his computer.

Harvey waits, but that seems to be all he has to say on the matter.

“I know the deposition was rough,” he tries again, “but just because Sloan Moseley isn’t especially qualified for her position doesn’t mean we can’t find other clients who’ll make better defendants.”

“Uh-huh,” Mike mutters, digging through a large and seemingly unorganized box behind him for a particular file which, Harvey knows from experience, may or may not be where it’s supposed to be.

Harvey tips his head down toward the ground, rolling his shoulders back. He gets it; it’s been a tough month for all of them.

“I want to get your input on Rachel’s conduct on this case so far,” he says. “I know you think she’s loyal to the firm, but I’m worried she might be making this case too personal, and I don’t want it to blow up in our faces if Robert tries to use his relationship with his daughter as some kind of leverage.”

“She’s loyal to Jessica,” Mike says tautly, his eyes darting between the papers in his hand and the computer on his lap as he types in fits and starts.

Harvey grits his teeth. It’s been tough for all of them, sure, but at some point he needs to call on the fact that Mike is still his associate, being put through one of the most prestigious law schools in the world on his dime and his good faith.

“Alright, look,” he says, taking his hand out of his pocket and crossing his arms over his chest. “I get that you’re having a hard time with all this, I know you want to show everyone up, and I know you’re acing Harvard and you’re turning in great work and you think you can do everything in the world by yourself, but if you’ve got a problem, you gotta talk to me about it, because this passive-aggressive bullshit isn’t going to cut it.”

“I _can’t,_ ” Mike yells, smacking the file in his hand down onto the floor and glaring up at Harvey furiously. “I _can’t_ do it all, that _is_ the problem, okay? I can’t save a whole staff of nurses’ jobs and ace Corporate Reorganization and save Jessica from Hardman and, get a commendation letter from my Analytical Methods professor, and figure out what Rachel Zane wants to get back at her father for and, and my grandmother just died, and I’m all alone, and you’re—out there, and I’m in here, and I don’t…”

Mike hunches his shoulders as the fight drains out of him, shoving the computer off his lap to skid across the floor as he sags down, pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead as he takes a tremulous breath.

He mumbles something into his chest, and Harvey steps forward, leaning down a bit.

“What?”

“I can’t do it,” Mike says loudly, looking somewhere in the vicinity of Harvey’s legs. “I feel like a goddamn fraud, a fucking— I feel like such a fake. I don’t know why I thought I was good enough for this, I don’t even know what I’m doing it _for_ anymore, there’s… There’s no way I can survive another year like this. But I can’t say any of that out loud,” he mocks himself, “because Jessica let you take this huge risk on me and I have to prove you right, I have to be, I have to be better than the best. Better than everyone else. I have to show them all that you didn’t make the biggest mistake of your entire career when you hired me.”

Okay. Here we go.

Without sparing a thought for the sharp press of his trousers or the clean cuffs of his shirt, Harvey kneels down beside Mike, pressing his hand to the ground for balance and angling himself closer when Mike looks away.

“Well, you did just say all that out loud,” he points out. “And you know what, Mike, you’re not a fake. You’re not a fraud. It was pretty goddamn selfish of me to offer you this job in the first place, but you took it on, law school and all, because you wanted it, you’re still here because you’ve proved that you deserve it, and I want you to be the best— I do,” he insists when Mike laughs darkly, “and I know you can do it, but I don’t want you to kill yourself over it because this job is worth a lot but it’s not worth dying for. Besides,” he adds spontaneously, “you know what it would look like if my associate—the guy who’s supposed to be a reflection of me—if he up and worked himself to death, do you have any idea how bad that would make me look? Do you have any idea how much paperwork I’d have to do to fix that mess?”

See, Mike? Gallows humor. Everything’s fine.

Mike shakes his head.

“I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Harvey smiles.

“I know you wouldn’t.”

The grin seems less forced this time around, the laughter less bitter, and Mike rests his arms on his knees, folding his hands together as he settles down and it’s not as though anything has happened, exactly, to change the reality of what he’s facing, but he’s not going through it alone anymore, if he ever was.

“Hey.”

Mike looks up quickly, and Harvey makes an ill-advised attempt at shrugging that forces him to sit on the ground proper. It’s alright; he’ll send these pants to the dry cleaners as soon as he gets home.

“I never did get you a birthday present, did I?”

Casting his gaze down with a funny little smile, Mike shakes his head.

“Harvey, you’ve already given me more than enough,” he says. “There’s no way you can top…everything you’ve already done.”

“No?”

Mike shrugs. “I guess I wouldn’t say no to an orchid.”

Harvey snickers.

“Cute,” he says. “Except that flowers die. I was thinking of something a little better.”

“You don’t have to give me anything.”

“I know.” Shifting around, Harvey inches a little closer. “But you said you’re all alone, and I want you to stop thinking that way. Especially on my account, and _especially_ because it’s not true.”

Mike angles his body down like he’s trying to get a better look at Harvey, trying to see more of him at once, or to see him more clearly, as though something’s happened that he doesn’t understand. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Harvey enunciates, “that I’m giving you…me. Whenever you feel like you’re alone. Whenever you need help, whenever you’re getting in over your head, whenever it’s too much for you to handle. I’m here for you, Mike, whenever you need me.”

Mike only looks at him, and Harvey immediately wonders if that was the wrong thing to say. The wrong thing to offer. Sure, it was a little spontaneous, especially considering the amount of time he’d put into finding something absolutely perfect, the number of ideas he’d begun to formulate and invariably discarded, but it had _felt_ right, hadn’t it, and that has to _mean_ something, doesn’t it?

Doesn’t it?

Mike only looks at him.

Harvey clears his throat.

“Sorry it doesn’t come with a gift receipt,” he jokes, “but you might be able to…store credit.”

For god’s sake, man.

Mike shakes his head slowly.

“I can’t,” he starts, stopping immediately to revise his thought process, biting down on his lower lip. “You don’t know how much this means to me,” he tries again. “I know the work’s only going to get harder, I’m not asking you to take it easy on me, but you just… You’re—” He shakes his head. “I’ll never be able to repay you for this.”

“It’s not about quid pro quo,” Harvey assures him. “It’s about being there for someone I care about.”

“I love you,” Mike blurts out.

Harvey freezes.

Mike winces.

“Shit, I didn’t… I didn’t mean to say that.”

“What?” Harvey asks dumbly.

Mike leans back, raising his hands in a weak defensive gesture. “Forget it,” he says, “I— It’s been an, uh, emotional twenty minutes. Rough couple of weeks. It’s fine. I’m fine. Never mind. Uh, thank you for…your support.”

“Mike,” Harvey presses, spurred on by the clumsy backpedaling, “what do you mean?”

Turning to the stacks of files surrounding him, Mike grits his teeth nervously.

“I…respect the hell out of you.”

Right.

Harvey shifts his body around to get a slightly better view of Mike’s face.

“How long?”

Mike sighs, closing his eyes.

“Last summer?” he guesses. “I don’t know. Maybe spring. I think it was coming on for awhile before I figured out what it was.”

_You make me feel so special._

Harvey startles somewhat at the recollection filtering through his mind. That was around the time he stopped forwarding his calls to Mike’s cell phone, wasn’t it? Must’ve been a pretty significant reduction to his workload.

Huh.

“Maybe you’re just grateful.”

Mike turns to look at him with the driest expression Harvey has ever seen.

“Grateful for the two hours’ sleep a night?” he asks. “Grateful to be writing two completely different twenty-five page papers at the same time? Grateful for back-to-back meetings with professors, grateful to be constantly on call, to write hundreds of briefs and summaries and reviews, grateful for being so busy I don’t have any time for friends? So busy I don’t even _have_ friends?”

Harvey winces. “You never said anything.”

“Like I’m going to screw up the best thing in my life,” Mike retorts. “Harvey, you went to Harvard, you’ve been an associate here; I’m trying to do both at the same time, what did you _think_ was going to happen?”

Okay, that’s fair.

But…wait one goddamn second.

“The best thing in your life?” Harvey inquires. Mike offers an uncomfortable sort of shrug.

“Yeah, of course,” he says. “I mean, it’s hard as hell, but I’m studying something I love, I’m working at one of the best firms in the country, I get to—I get to work with…you.” He smiles, somewhere between forced and not. “You saved my life, and I’ll always be grateful to you for that.”

Grateful.

Harvey thinks back to his unwavering determination to hire Mike, to his unflinching pride and confidence in his work, even before it was spectacular; he thinks of his vicious defense of Mike in the face of Louis’s oily efforts to steal him away, his immediate reliance on Mike when Donna was forced away, his stomach-clenching terror when Mike put himself out of reach and then the heart-wrenching sorrow when he learned that it was because his grandmother had died.

Mike isn’t the only one who’s got something to be grateful for.

“I think you’re underestimating your own worth,” he says. Mike laughs through his teeth.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he says. “It was easier to not bring it up when I was in Cambridge, and you were here, and we were just talking on the phone, but this doesn’t have to change anything, I’ll still— I’ll still work as hard as I can, for you, and with my schoolwork, and…nothing’ll change, I won’t make it weird or anything.”

Harvey thinks back to looking forward to receiving his daily message reports from Mike, to contemplating taking two months of unearned vacation time to stay with him at Harvard after his grandmother’s death, to calling him for no other reason than to hear his voice, to make him feel closer than he was.

Mike isn’t the only one who’s felt this coming on for awhile.

Well. Enough is enough.

“I want to make it clear,” he begins, “right up front, that this doesn’t change anything about your scholarship, or your internship, or what’s expected of you as a representative of this firm, and of me.”

Mike narrows his eyes. “I didn’t really think it would.”

“Also,” he goes on, “it’s in violation of Pearson Hardman’s bylaws, and it’s completely crazy to even consider it.”

“ _What_ is going on right now.”

“But, hypothetically, we’d have two choices: We could either keep it a secret, or go to Jessica and ask for special dispensation.”

“ _Harvey._ ”

“Yeah.”

Planting his hands firmly on his knees, Mike leans forward and glares into his eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

Taking one last fleeting moment to remind himself that this is a ridiculous idea, that the optics are going to be awful, that Mike is his associate and his responsibility whether things work out or not, that Mike is going back to Harvard in the fall and long distance relationships have a notorious reputation for being nigh on impossible to maintain, Harvey sets his shoulders back and does his best to project into the world all the confidence he wishes he was feeling.

“Interoffice relationships.”

Mike falls back on his hands in such a way that had he been standing, he surely would have stumbled.

“You mean dating?”

Clearing his throat, Harvey pushes off the floor to rise back up to his feet.

“That’s another word for it.”

“Wait,” Mike scrambles to stand as well, his right foot slipping on a sheet of paper that must have been stuck under his leg, “are you asking me out?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

Harvey smirks at the banker boxes in front of his face. “It was more of a reminder.”

Mike kicks the paper off to the side and regains his footing. “Of…what?”

Turning away from the boxes, Harvey looks back at Mike. “Of how serious we’d have to be about this to take a shot at it.”

Mike stares disbelievingly for a few seconds before a smile beings to creep across his face.

“I don’t think I’m gonna be needing that store credit,” he confides. Harvey snorts inelegantly as he tries not to burst out laughing.

“Mike, you are one in a million.”

Mike’s creeping smile blossoms into a wide grin, a little giddy, and he begins fidgeting with his hands as though he suddenly doesn’t quite know what to do with them. Taking a step sideways, he nearly knocks over a tall stack of papers, and Harvey reaches out to catch his arm, taking pity on him before something truly catastrophic happens.

“So given how much time you’ve spent down here since you got back,” Harvey says lowly, looking into Mike’s crystalline eyes as he draws nearer, “I can understand if you think this is too much of a sacred space for someth—”

Suddenly, too fast for Harvey to fully process, Mike’s free hand scrabbles around to the back of his neck, his mouth pressed to Harvey’s and cutting his proposition off halfway through as he leaps ahead to his enthusiastic answer. As he comes to regain his bearings, Harvey wraps his arms around Mike’s back, pulling him close and letting his eyes fall shut, moving without protest as Mike backs him into one of the steel shelves.

The frenetic pace slows only after Mike takes another step forward and lands on that damn stray paper, slipping and collapsing into Harvey’s embrace. Harvey tries to silence his giggles as Mike looks away shamefacedly, but it doesn’t matter; the mood’s already been shot.

“You okay?” Harvey asks, helping Mike recover his footing.

“Shut up,” Mike mumbles.

“Come on,” Harvey goads, raising his hand to Mike’s cheek and turning him to face him, “sex in the file room, it’s a little cliché.”

Mike squeezes his eyes shut and presses his face into Harvey’s chest. “Shut _up._ ”

“Mike.” Harvey fits his fingers under Mike’s chin and tilts his face up again. “After work tonight, let’s go out for dinner. Get our minds off…everything.”

Mike whimpers pitifully, and Harvey grins.

“If you can find something on Folsom before then, maybe we’ll have time for dessert, too.”

Mike’s face flushes, and whether it’s from their exertions a moment ago or anticipation of the night to come, Harvey can’t be sure, but whatever the cause, he pushes himself away from Harvey and dives straight back to his research pile with admirably single-minded intensity. Harvey permits himself a moment more to regard him fondly before he heads back down the corridor, back out the door, back to his own office to search for anything remotely useful to bring against Robert.

The quest is stymied a bit by persistent thoughts of the coming evening.

Even if Mike doesn’t find anything on Folsom by then, he suspects it’ll turn out just fine.

\---

At two thirty, despite not having unearthed any viable evidence to use to their advantage for the Folsom suit, Harvey figures he’s due for a lunch break. He’ll think more clearly with some food in his stomach, and anyway, it’ll probably do him good to get away from all this paperwork for awhile and clear his head.

He’s just accepted his bagel, and change for his twenty, from the coffee cart guy when Mike trots up out of nowhere with an eager glint in his eye; turning on his heel, Harvey begins a protracted stroll back to the firm as Mike falls in step beside him.

“I had an idea about Folsom Foods,” Mike divulges.

Putting on a mildly inquisitive expression, Harvey begins to unwrap his bagel and wonders if the evening is about to become a great deal freer. “What’ve you got?”

“I checked the review of every promotion from the last five years,” Mike says. “The men’s reviews are all individually tailored, some of them actually get really specific, but every time they don’t promote a woman, the review uses some combination of the same sixteen words.”

Harvey hums. “Which are?”

“‘High-strung,’” Mike ticks off on his fingers, “‘sensitive,’ ‘aggressive,’ ‘abrasive’—”

“Coded language,” Harvey interrupts. He’s familiar with the practice. “So they’ve done everything they can to avoid giving any individual candidate enough ammo for a gender discrimination suit.”

“Yeah,” Mike says as Harvey takes a bite of his bagel, “they’ve done it a hundred and thirteen times across all twenty-two divisions of the company.”

Harvey smirks. “Sloan Moseley might’ve been untalented and pathetic, but I bet you at least fifty of those women were more qualified for those promotions than the men who ended up with them.”

Mike smiles back, but it lacks the verve Harvey’s come to anticipate from him, the excitement he’d expect from the revelation of a smoking gun. Harvey stops walking without much care for the rest of the pedestrians on the fairly wide sidewalk, and Mike stops beside him.

“Mike,” he says confidentially, “the thing before, about dessert, I didn’t mean to make you think you had to earn your keep that way.”

Mike shakes his head. “I didn’t,” he says, even though Harvey thinks he might have done, just a little. “It’s not that. It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“Convincing,” Harvey says dryly, and Mike looks away for a moment.

Instinct tells Harvey to press, to push until he breaks; compassion makes him wait, to let him come around when he’s ready.

He wonders when that all started.

“I was just thinking about you,” Mike says, which isn’t the most comforting beginning, but Harvey decides to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Sure enough, he shakes his head, smiling tightly at whatever thoughts are running through his mind. “I was thinking about everything,” he corrects himself, “being overwhelmed with work, and school, and then coming back and working on this huge case, and how all this stuff is happening in my life, and now—you, you and me, and I picked up the phone…”

He trails off, but that’s okay; Harvey knows what’s coming next.

He was going to call his grandmother.

Seeming to take Harvey’s soft smile as some kind of misunderstanding, Mike shakes his head hurriedly. “I’m still— I— I really appreciate everything you offered me, the, the birthday present, your support, and I do want to be— I want to try an interoffice relationship, or, dating, or whatever we’re calling it, I just—”

“Mike,” Harvey stops him gently, “it’s okay. And just for the record, I’m not looking to have a monopoly on being your support system; as long as you know I’m here, anytime you have a problem.”

Mike offers a tremulous smile, and Harvey slides his hand over his shoulder.

“Let’s go back to the office, you can show me those promotion records.”

“Yeah.”

They walk up the front steps, into the lobby, through security to the elevators. Harvey wraps up the rest of his bagel, and Mike hunches his shoulders.

It’s been a rough month.

Given the odd hour, it’s no surprise that they have a carriage to themselves. Harvey presses the button for the fiftieth floor, and Mike leans against the wall.

“Hey, Mike?” Harvey says as the indicator ticks over to twenty-one.

Mike sighs.

“Mm?”

Harvey reaches out to rest his arm across Mike’s back. Mike takes the invitation to lean against him, resting his head on Harvey’s shoulder.

“Thanks for sticking around.”

Mike smiles. He’s doing all he can, Harvey knows; he’s doing his best.

It’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> “Go ahead, make my day.”  
> —Harry Callahan, _Sudden Impact_ (1983)
> 
> “Think things over, Callahan. Get with it. It’s a whole new ball game these days.”  
> “Funny. I never thought of it as a game.”  
> —Captain Briggs and Harry Callahan, _Sudden Impact_ (1983)
> 
> “We never lost an American in space. We’re sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch. Failure is not an option.”  
> —Gene Kranz, _Apollo 13_ (1995)
> 
> “This is Jim Rockford. At the tone, leave your name and message. I’ll get back to you.”  
> —Jim Rockford, _The Rockford Files_ (1974 – 1980)
> 
> “Harvey, what are you doing here?”  
> “You said it yourself. I never brought you a gift when you moved in.”  
> “Still don’t see an orchid.”  
> “Flowers die. I thought I’d bring something better. Me. Across the table from you.”  
> —Mike and Harvey, “[Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s04e02)” (s04e02)
> 
> Based on [this](http://www.seltzerfontaine.com/the-search/planning-your-search/the-law-firm-recruiting-calendar/) law firm recruiting calendar, I’m assuming Harvey conducted his associate interviews in late September, meaning that Mike would have all of the winter, spring, and summer semesters to finish his bachelor’s degree. CUNY and most other colleges limit students to 18 credits per semester, but special permission can be granted to students in good standing who wish to take more than that.
> 
> White & Case LLP is a major international law firm based in New York City.
> 
> Actual coffee tea is tea made from the leaves of the coffee plant, but when Mike says “coffee-tea,” he’s referring to tea steeped in coffee rather than hot water.
> 
> I’ve found this to be one of the bigger points of contention among fans, which is why I’m treating it flippantly in the text, but according to my [timeline](http://statusquoergo.tumblr.com/post/166090473589/suits-keeps-throwing-timeline-facts-at-me-and-i-am), Mike is thirty years old in the pilot. May eighth as his birthday is derived from his [driver’s license](https://ivorykaleidoscope.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/mikes-license.jpg) (which also says his birth year is 1985, so, partial credit).
> 
> Harvey and Mike’s make out scene in the file room is a lampshade/parody of Rachel and Mike’s sex scene in the file room at the end of “War” (s02e16).
> 
> Harvey and Mike’s conversation at the coffee cart is adapted from “[Zane vs. Zane](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s02e13)” (s02e13).
> 
> The timeline of events as presented in this fic does not strictly match any hint of “timeline” given in canon, but for reference: The Dreibach suit is handled in “The Shelf Life” (s01e10). Daniel Hardman and Jessica’s territorial feud is a running subplot of season two. The nurses’ strike is handled in “Meet the New Boss” (s02e03). Donna is fired in “Break Point” (s02e05); Jessica expresses concern over Harvey’s poker playing and hires Cameron as his assistant, and the situation with Keith Hoyt and Thomas Walsh is handled, in “All In” (s02e06). Harvey punches Travis Tanner, and Mike digs up dirt on Tanner for the settlement, in “Sucker Punch” (s02e07). Donna is rehired, and Edith dies, in “Asterisk” (s02e09), and Harvey visits Mike at his apartment in “High Noon” (s02e10). The Folsom Foods suit begins, Sloan Moseley is deposed, and Mike finds incriminating information about Folsom’s promotion practices, in “Zane vs. Zane”; the suit is resolved sometime between “Normandy” (s02e15) and “War.”


End file.
